Please note that many of these questions are answered within the official
gentoo documents and guides. This is simply a list of common questions. Please
read the documentation and/or man pages to gain a greater understanding of how
Gentoo and GNU/Linux works, and for answers to questions which may not be
answered here.

How is Gentoo pronounced, and what does it
mean?

What makes Gentoo different?

Installation

Things are really unstable and I'm using "-O9
-ffast-math -fomit-frame-pointer" optimizations. What gives?

How can I change the root (or any other user's)
password?

How do I add a normal user?

Why can't a user su to root?

How do I disable devfs?

Can I upgrade Gentoo from one release to
another without reinstalling?

My kernel doesn't boot (properly), what should
I do now?

My proxy requires authentication, what do I
have to do?

How do I burn an ISO file?

What CD/stage should I use for my CPU?

Package Management

In what format are the packages stored?

I want to perform the ./configure step myself.
Can I?

How do I use emerge from behind a
firewall?

What if rsync doesn't work for me?

I have only slow modem connection at home. Can
I download sources somewhere else and add them to my system?

Source tarballs are collecting in
/usr/portage/distfiles. Is it safe to delete these files?

What's in /var/tmp/portage? Is it safe to
delete the files and directories in /var/tmp/portage?

Usage

How do I set up an International Keyboard
Layout?

DNS name resolution works for root only.

Why can't my user use their own crontab?

How do I get numlock to start on boot?

How do I have my terminal cleared when I log
out?

I'm not able to run X applications as root after
su'ing

Maintenance

ReiserFS and filesystem corruption issues --
how to fix'em, etc.

Development

Where can I report bugs?

How often are new releases made?

My speaker beeps like crazy. How do I disable console
beeps?

Resources

Where can I find more information about Gentoo
Linux?

Can I buy a CD of Gentoo Linux?

This FAQ hasn't answered my question. What do I
do now?

Getting StartedHow is Gentoo pronounced, and what does it mean?

A Gentoo is a species of a small, fast penguin, pronounced "gen-too" (the
"g" in "Gentoo" is a soft "g", as in "gentle"). The scientific name of the Gentoo
penguin is Pygoscelis papua. The name Gentoo has been given to the
penguin by the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas).

What makes Gentoo different?

Gentoo uses a BSD ports-like system called Portage. Portage is a package management system
that allows great flexibility while installing and maintaining software on a
Gentoo system. It provides compile-time option support (through USE flags),
conditional dependencies, pre-package installation summary, safe installation
(through sandboxing) and uninstallation of software, system profiles, configuration
file protection amongst several other features.

With Gentoo you can build your entire system from source, using your choice of
optimizations. You have complete control over what packages are or aren't
installed. Gentoo provides you with numerous choices, so you can install Gentoo
to your own preferences, which is why Gentoo is called a meta-distribution.

Gentoo is actively developed. The entire distribution uses a rapid pace
development style: patches to the packages are quickly integrated in the
mainline tree, documentation is updated on daily basis, portage features are
added frequently, and official releases occur twice per year.

Don't bother using anything higher than -O3 since it isn't supported by
current versions of gcc. Very aggressive optimizations sometimes cause the
compiler to streamline the assembly code to the point where it doesn't quite
do the same thing anymore.

Please try to compile with CFLAGS -O2 -march=<your_arch> before
reporting a bug.

How do I change the root (or any other user's) password?

You can use passwd to change the password for the user you are logged
into. As root, you can change any user password by issuing the command
passwd username For extra options and setting, please man passwd.

How do I add a normal user?

The command adduser username will add a user called "username". However,
this method does not give the user many of the rights you might want to grant
him, so the following command is preferred:

# useradd -m -G users,audio,wheel username

This will add a user named "username". The option audio adds them to the
audio group and allows the user to access sound devices. The option
wheel adds the user to the wheel group, which allows the user to
execute the command su, which in turn allows them to gain the
privileges of the root user.

Why can't a user su to root?

For security reasons, users may only su to root if they belong to the
wheel group. To add a username to the wheel group, issue the following command
as root:

# gpasswd -a username wheel

How do I disable devfs?

Gentoo requires either devfs kernel support or udev userland support to
function correctly. With the advent of the 2.6 kernel being stable on most
archs, udev is recommended. Please see the udev guide for information on configuring
udev.

Can I upgrade Gentoo from one release to another without reinstalling?

In fact, there is no difference between the various releases after they have
been installed. Gentoo 1.4 and later are glibc-2.3.x based. As such,
running emerge --sync && emerge -uDN world will bring your
entire system up to speed with the "latest Gentoo". The differences between
individual releases lie in the installation medium and pre-compiled packages.
See the Gentoo Upgrading Guide
for more information about profiles and their role in upgrading.

My kernel doesn't boot, what should I do now?

You don't need to redo every step of the installation, but investigating the
kernel and all associated steps is necessary. Suppose you have installed Gentoo
on /dev/hda1 (/boot) and /dev/hda3 (/) with
/dev/hda2 being the swap space:

If, on the other hand, the problem lays with your bootloader configuration,
follow the same steps, but instead of configuring/compiling your kernel, you
should reconfigure your bootloader (recompilation isn't necessary).

My proxy requires authentication, what do I have to do?

To have Portage automatically use this scheme, define it in
/etc/make.conf:

You need to burn the file in raw mode. This means that you should not
just place the file on the CD, but interpret the file as an entire CD.

There are lots of CD burning tools available; covering them all would be a
Sisyphean problem. However, describing a few popular tools never hurts:

With EasyCD Creator you select File, Record CD
from CD image. Then you change the Files of type to ISO image
file. Then locate the ISO file and click Open. When you click on
Start recording the ISO image will be burned correctly onto the CD-R.

With Nero Burning ROM, cancel the wizard which automatically pops up and
select Burn Image from the File menu. Select the image you
want to burn and click Open. Now hit the Burn button and watch
your brand new CD being burnt.

With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc (replace
/dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path) followed
by the path to the ISO file :)

First you need to find our what CPU you use. Suppose it's a Pentium-M. Then you
need to find out what CPU it is, instruction-wise, compatible with. You may
need to consult the CPUs vendor website for this, although Google is at least as efficient :-).

If you are uncertain, take a "lower" CD/stage file, for instance a i686 or even
generic x86 (or the equivalent in your arch). This will ensure that your system
will work, but may not be as fast as further optimizations.

If you are building from a Stage 1, please note that many more options exist
than those for which Gentoo builds binary stages. Please see the gcc
guide for setting -march.

Package ManagementIn what form are the packages stored?

Packages aren't "stored" per se. Instead, Gentoo provides a set of scripts
which can resolve dependencies, fetch source code, and compile a version of the
package specifically for your needs. We generally only build binaries for
releases and snapshots. The Gentoo Ebuild
HOWTO covers the contents of an ebuild script in detail.

For full ISO releases, we create a full suite of binary packages in an enhanced
.tbz2 format, which is .tar.bz2 compatible with meta-information
attached to the end of the file. These can be used to install a working (though
not fully optimized) version of the package quickly and efficiently.

It is possible to create RPMs (Redhat package manager files) using Gentoo's
portage, but it is not currently possible to use already existing RPMs to
install packages.

I want to perform the ./configure step myself. Can I?

Yes, but it is not trivial, nor is it recommended. Since the method to do this
requires a good understanding of portage internals and commands, it is instead
recommended that you patch the ebuild to do whatever it is that you want and
place it in the portage overlay (thats why it exists). This is much
better for maintainability, and usually easier. See the Ebuild
HOWTO for more information.

How do I use emerge from behind a firewall?

See the questions on proxies, rsync, and downloading source
files manually.

What if rsync doesn't work for me?

If you're behind a firewall that doesn't permit rsync traffic, then you can use
emerge-webrsync which will fetch and install a Portage snapshot for you
through regular HTTP. See the proxy section of this
document for information on downloading source files and portage snapshots via
a proxy.

I have only slow modem connection at home. Can I download sources somewhere
else and add them to my system?

Definitely. You can run emerge --pretend package to see what programs
are going to be installed. To find out the sources for those packages and where
to download the sources from, you can run emerge -fp package. Download
sources and bring them on any media home. Put the sources into
/usr/portage/distfiles/ and then simply run emerge package.
Be warned, however, that this is a tedious process.

Source tarballs are collecting in /usr/portage/distfiles/. Is it safe to
delete these files?

Deleting these files will have no negative impact on day-to-day performance.
However, it might be wise to keep the most recent version of the files; often
several ebuilds will be released for the same version of a specific piece of
software. If you have deleted the archive and you upgrade the software it will
be necessary to download them from the internet again. There are programs which
users have
developed to clean out all but the most recent version of sourcefiles.
Note that while this seems to work, it is not officially maintained. Use
at your own risk.

What's in /var/tmp/portage? Is it safe to delete the files and
directories in /var/tmp/portage?

During compilation, Gentoo saves the sources of the package in
/var/tmp/portage. These files and folder are usually deleted upon
a successful merge, but this sometimes fails. It is safe to clean out all
contents of this directory if emerge is not running. Just to be sure,
always pgrep emerge before cleaning out this directory.

How do I set up an International Keyboard Layout?

Edit the KEYMAP variable in /etc/rc.conf. Then, either
reboot or restart the keymaps script:

# /etc/init.d/keymaps restart

DNS name resolution works for root only

/etc/resolv.conf has the wrong permissions; chmod it as
follows:

# chmod 0644 /etc/resolv.conf

Why can't my user use their own crontab?

You need to add that user to the cron group.

How do I get numlock to start on boot?

If you work in command line, you only need to rc-update add
numlock default &&/etc/init.d/numlock start.

Each GUI provides different tools for this sort of thing; please check the help
section or online manuals for assistance.

If you want this to happen automatically when you add a new
user, do the same for the /etc/skel/.bash_logout:

# echo clear >> /etc/skel/.bash_logout

I'm not able to run X applications as root after su'ing

This issue seems only to occur when you log on graphically. startx users
don't have this behaviour. The problem is a bug in Gentoo's PAM,
the solution however is quite simple: add the following line to
/etc/profile.

export XAUTHORITY="${HOME}/.Xauthority"

MaintenanceReiserFS and filesystem corruption issues -- how to fix'em, etc

If your ReiserFS partition is corrupt, try booting the Gentoo Install CD and
run reiserfsck --rebuild-tree on the corrupted filesystem. This should
make the filesystem consistent again, although you may have lost some files or
directories due to the corruption.

DevelopmentWhere can I report bugs?

Use our Bugzilla. If you are unsure if
your problem is an actual bug, you can visit #gentoo on the FreeNode IRC network.

How often are new releases made?

Gentoo's packages are usually updated shortly after the main authors release
new code. As for when Gentoo itself makes new stage/profile/ISO releases, check
our Release Engineering Project page. New
releases are announced on the gentoo-announce mailing list. See the question
on upgrading for more information.

My speaker beeps like crazy. How do I disable console beeps?

Console beeps can be turned off using setterm, like this:

# setterm -blength 0

If you would like to turn off the console beeps on boot, you need to put this
command in /etc/conf.d/local.start. However, this only disables
beeps for the current terminal. To disable beeps for other terminals, pipe the
command output to the target terminal, like this:

# setterm -blength 0 >/dev/vc/1

You need to replace /dev/vc/1 with the terminal you would like to disable
console beeps for.

ResourcesWhere can I find more information about Gentoo Linux?

The official Gentoo documentation can be found at
http://docs.gentoo.org.

Can I buy a CD of Gentoo Linux?

Install CDs for all supported architecture are available on our Gentoo Store. When you
purchase a CD from our store, you are also supporting our development. So,
please consider buying from our store if possible.

You can also find fresh CDs from various resellers listed on our Get Gentoo! page.

This FAQ hasn't answered my question. What do I do now?

A good first step is to browse through the relevant documentation, failing that, the various Gentoo
Linux mailing lists listed on Google.
To search through the Gentoo mailing lists, just enter "lists.gentoo.org foo"
to search for "foo". If all else fails, or you just want to hang out with
Gentoo folks, visit us on irc: #gentoo on irc.freenode.net.